


hell's kitchen confidential

by doublejeopardy



Category: The Punisher (TV 2017)
Genre: F/M, Food as a Metaphor for Love, Healing, au - frank is a foodie, it took me a year to come up with the title of this fic, no botulism-inducing canned beans here folks
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-12
Updated: 2019-06-17
Packaged: 2019-10-08 16:23:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 7,530
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17389694
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/doublejeopardy/pseuds/doublejeopardy
Summary: frank cooks for karen, and heals. an AU in which netflix exists but gordon ramsay doesn’t.





	1. coffee

**Author's Note:**

> set post TPS1 but also ignoring whatever happened in the defenders. ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯ any errors in the geography of new york city are entirely mine. 
> 
> feedback welcome! thanks for reading.

After the first hotel bombing, the real hostage situation, the second hotel bombing, the fake hostage situation, the elevator, and five weeks of radio silence, Frank Castle reenters Karen Page’s orbit without much fanfare except the greatest cup of coffee she’s ever had.

She emerges from the filth and humidity of the subway to a late December afternoon and he’s just - there.

He stands silhouetted against the street sign and the intersection beyond and the cotton candy pink-blue winter sky beyond that like he’s been waiting for her. Like they had arranged to meet here.

For an insane moment, she racks her brain - had they arranged to meet here, now?

No.

She’d been waiting for him to reach out for days, then weeks. She had been pretty sure he was alive since the death of the Punisher would have been national headline news, but she had had no idea if he was okay, or even in New York. More than once she’d had half a mind to call Agent Madani, whose business card had somehow miraculously survived the ordeal at the hotel unscathed but for a crease in one corner, just to ask - just to see - if maybe she knew something. Karen never did.

But Frank is here now.

He’s clean-shaven and his hair has grown longer on the top, long enough to sweep back a bit, but still shorn close on the sides. She can see the jagged red line over his right ear from the bullet that had grazed him in the hotel, but it’s faded and scarred over. His face - sloe-eyed, fine-browed, with that red slash of a mouth and a jawline that could open envelopes - sports no cuts or bruises. He’s as big and broad as ever, neatly dressed in a dark jacket, dark flannel, dark jeans, dark boots.

He looks - good. Healthy. Hearty, well-fed, and clean. Normal. Not Frank Castle-normal, but New Yorker-normal. He would attract no special attention on the subway, in a park, or at a coffee shop, except maybe for his strapping frame and striking profile. He bears almost no resemblance to the dark star at the center of the “Trial of the Century.”

She realizes she’s been standing perfectly still for a full minute, staring at him in complete silence. The rivers of foot traffic part around them and eventually thin as the train’s passengers disperse into the falling night, and then it’s just her and him and the sounds of Manhattan around them.

She doesn’t question how he knew to find her here.

He takes half a hesitant step towards her, ducks his head in that shy way she had come to know so well, before he had disappeared. Again.

“Hey.” His eyes are dark and unreadable. That’s strange - she remembers his face being expressive, almost wildly so; she wonders if she’s lost her ability to read him, or if his poker face has just improved.

She blinks, suddenly acutely aware of her hammering heart and the clammy cold-hot feeling clinging to her face and chest. She’s still standing perfectly still.

“Brought you some coffee,” he says, stepping another half-step closer. “Cream, no sugar, right?” He holds out a pale blue ceramic thermos with a plastic lid.

She reaches out and whispers a “thanks,” her voice airy and alien to her own ears. The thermos is warm between her hands.

What the _hell_ is she supposed to say to him? _Where the fuck were you? How did you get out of there?_ And maybe, the most tantalizing question, the one with an answer she might not be ready for: _Why are you back?_

She fills the silence by taking a sip from the thermos.

Karen has had a lot of coffee in her day. Horrible coffee. Okay coffee. Good coffee. Great coffee.

This is, without a doubt, the best goddamn cup of coffee she’s ever had. She’s struggling to even think of a second-best cup. She’d probably sell a kidney for an IV line of it into her forearm at all times for the rest of her life, but she’s also aware that her mind has accelerated from total blankness to racing in about four seconds because it’s suddenly really hitting her that _Frank is back and he’s right here with her_ and she’s fighting to not burst into tears.

She opens her mouth to say something meaningful like, _I missed you_ or _Are you okay_ but instead what comes out is: “Did you make this?”

“Yeah.” His face is still alarmingly indecipherable. 

“It’s…wow. It’s really good,” she blurts. “Do you have some fancy brewing equipment or something?”

He snorts, shakes his head, andgrants her a tiny, wry smile. It’s very _Frank_ , and relief floods her at an expression she recognizes. “Nah. Just a percolator, good beans.”

An awkward silence falls around them.

His eyes dart to her and then away, off towards something in the distance behind her. He squints a bit and then takes a fast breath in. “Do you want me to leave?”

She wants - she wants the opposite of that. She wants him not to leave. To not ever leave again. “No,” she breathes, fast, and then calmer, more evenly: “Please don’t.”

He refocuses on her. “You want to walk?”

“Yeah.” She nods. “Yeah, let’s walk.”

They wander through the Kitchen, past shitty Chinese restaurants and grimy body shops and old ladies pushing empty shopping carts over the crumbling sidewalks while the darkness falls around them. 

The temperature has fallen below freezing since the sun slipped under the horizon and a biting wind cuts at her face, but the coffee keeps Karen’s hands warm. She sips it slowly, savoring it. It’s like red wine or a $100 steak or something - it gets richer and more complex with every taste, deep and aromatic and spicy but also smooth, with a hint of vanilla and caramel. Paradoxically, the caffeine is helping to calm her racing thoughts, sharpen the lens of her thinking.

As they walk, Frank lays it all out, everything that’s happened since the day she last saw him - Micro and his family, Billy, Rawlins, Curtis, the carousel, Madani, the feds, his clean slate, settling into Pete Castiglione’s life, group, a job, a new apartment.

She takes it all in without comment, but her heart _aches_ for him and everything he’s had to endure. That he keeps enduring. That he’ll carry forever.

They walk together in silence for a few blocks before she breaks it, outside a Hungarian joint with a stuttering neon sign. 

“Frank - why did you stay away?” The _from me_ remains unsaid but hangs in the air anyway.

He stops walking and half-turns to her, head bowed. He’s silent for a moment before he speaks, still not looking quite at her. “I didn’t want to drag you into my shit. You know I have…baggage. At first, everything was in flux. I got a new name and passport and all that shit from Homeland. And then things settled. And then, when I got to really think, I wasn’t sure if you…” He pauses, sighs, and his gaze flickers up to hers now, steady and dark. “Bad shit happens to you when I’m around. If you don’t want to see me again - I get it. Just tell me.”

She can’t believe that’s the conclusion he’d draw from this. From everything they’ve been through together. He knows he’s not dead to her, that he hasn’t been for a long time and maybe he never really was. He has to know that telling him to leave her alone in that elevator damn near ripped her heart out. _He has to know._

She’s so afraid of scaring him off now that he’s just back, so she takes a moment to organize her thoughts before she speaks, then catches his gaze, holds it so he knows she means what she’s saying. “Frank, you’ve saved my life several times now. Bad shit happens to both of us and, so far, we’ve gotten out of it together. So no, I don’t want you to stay away.” She shoots him a small, courageous smile. “In fact, I wouldn’t mind seeing more of you.”

There’s a long pause while he looks at her like he’s trying to figure out if she’s lying. “Yeah? You want to?”

She refuses to read something hopeful in his voice. She flat-out _refuses_. But her smile widens anyway as she says, “Yeah.”And they keep walking. “Just so you’ll bring me more of this amazing coffee,” she adds, finally feeling comfortable enough to tease him again.

He nods once, twice, like he’s accepting a life-or-death mission. “I can do that.”

They find their way back to her building and she turns to him. “It was good to see you, Frank,” she says honestly. “Really good.”

He digs his hands deep into his jacket pockets and ducks his head again. “You too, ma’am.”

She hesitates to ask, fearful that the answer will disappoint her, but she says it anyway, because _fuck it_ , he’s finally _here_ and she wants him to _stay_ : “Will I see you again soon?”

He gives her that look again, the _I can’t tell if you’re bullshitting me_ look, but then his face clears and softens and he bites his lip thoughtfully. “Yeah. Yeah, I’ll be around.”

“Well, then,” she says, and she smiles softly, almost secretly. “See you around, Frank.”

He nods and turns to head north when she realizes she still has his thermos. She calls after him: “Hey - here’s your thermos.”

He swings around on his heel to look back at her, a movement with more whimsy than she thinks she’s ever seen him express, and cracks the first truly joyful smile that she can remember. “Keep it. Got it for you.”

Karen’s heart cracks and breaks then, at the surprising delight of a gift and Frank’s obvious delight in giving it to her, at the sight of his unbruised face, at that million-watt smile. Now her heart catches up to the thought her head has been wrapped around since she saw him again for the first time: Frank’s back, and something tells her he’s not going to disappear again.

She feels happy tears pricking at the corner of her eyes, but she blinks them away and instead raises the thermos in a _cheers_ gesture. “Thanks again for the coffee.”

He nods back and disappears into the night.

 ***

Two days later, she drops by Ellison’s office to snag a Starburst from the jar on his desk and discuss a piece on potential corruption in the public works department. She’s about to head back to her own office when Ellison calls out after her.

“Page - almost forgot, here’s a package for you. Not a bomb,” he says dryly, standing to hold out a lumpy yellow mailing envelope about the size of a pint glass. “We checked in the mailroom.”

The return address is one P. Castiglione, with an address in Hell’s Kitchen near 57th and 11th.

“You know this guy?” Ellison raises an eyebrow.

“Yeah.” Karen fights down a smile.” He’s a friend of mine.”

Back in her own office, she opens the envelope and pulls out a single paper vacuum-sealed bag of coffee beans. The label is handwritten, proclaiming the beans a dark Viennese roast, apparently from a small-batch coffee importer and roastery in Queens, and Ethiopia before that. She raises the bag to her nose and takes a deep inhale, and yes - caramel, spice, vanilla. These must be the beans that made that incredible coffee.

Now she really smiles.

Later that night, she grinds some of the beans and makes a cup of coffee. It’s incredible, so much better than any cup she’s ever made with the cheap grounds she usually keeps around.

But Frank’s cup was still better.


	2. sandwich

The clock in Karen’s office is ticking dangerously close to the 2 AM mark when three sharp taps against her window have her practically flying out of her chair. Before she even registers what’s happening, her hand is plunging into her purse for her trusty Bersa Thunder and she’s lunging low, whipping around to point it at the window when she realizes it’s fucking _Frank_ , perched on the fire escape like some malevolent giant bird.

Her chest heaves for another second or two with residual panic before she tosses the purse and the pistol aside, stands, unlatches the window, and pushes the sash up.

“ _Jesus_ , Frank! You scared me! I could have shot you!”

“You been here a while.”It’s an observation, not a question.

“Long night,” she sighs. And then, well - fuck it. It’s January and fucking freezing out there. “Want to come in?”

He peers into the office for another moment to make sure the door is closed and the blinds are fully drawn, and then silently - and surprisingly gracefully, for someone of his size - levers himself off the fire escape and onto the floor, neatly avoiding the messy stack of back issues piled on the windowsill.

He’s wearing those old black shitkickers and a black jacket over a black hoodie, with the hood pulled far over his face. There’s the telltale bulge of a firearm tucked into the waistband of his jeans. No tac vest, though. 

They’d been meeting up for coffee or a walk frequently in the weeks since he’s resurfaced, catching up on her work, his progress in group, her quest for a less shitty apartment, what he’s reading, the weather, whatever. But they have neatly skirted around the issue of his nighttime adventures. She isn’t sure what he’s planning to do with this second chance from Homeland, and she knows that’s none of her business. But every time she considers broaching the subject with him, she’s gripped with panic at the idea of him leaving, of him pushing her away with some bullshit of self-sacrificial notion of how being around him is too dangerous. So she hasn’t asked.

She sighs and folds her arms over her chest. “What’s going on?”

“Nothing - _nothing_ , honest,” he protests as her eyebrows shoot down suspiciously. “I was in the neighborhood, and I decided to - ”

“To spy on me.”

“To _check in_ on you.”

“Frank, we’ve talked about this. I’m a big girl, I can take care of myself. There’s no need for you to - ”

“Ma’am, if I were spying on you, I wouldn’t have come to the fire escape.”

She snorts, but he’s right. If Frank were really spying, he would have parked himself on a rooftop three blocks away with military-grade binoculars and a thermos of his magical coffee.

“So what is this about, Frank?” She runs a hand through her hair, and frowns at how stringy it feels. “Not that I don’t appreciate the social call, but - ”

He reaches into a pocket of his jacket and pulls outa small object about the size of two fists, neatly wrapped in tinfoil and held closed with a strip of blue painter’s tape. “Thought you might want this.”

“What is it?” She makes no move to take it from him.

“Sandwich.” He shakes it at her once. _Take it._

“Where did you get it?”

“Made it.”

She’s still staring at the parcel. “You made this.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“You made this for me?” Finally, she looks up to meet his eyes, reaches out, almost mechanically, and takes the sandwich.

“Yes, ma’am.”

She looks down at it, the military precision of the foil wrapping, the “KAREN” written in neat block Sharpie. The idea of him labeling the sandwich for her, as if he had made a bunch of them and was worried he’d get them all confused, and then carrying it around in his pocket _for her_ makes her feel bad for being short with him. And that it says her name and not “ma’am” warms her cheeks just a bit more than it should.

“I’m, uh - well, wow. Thank you, Frank.That’s really nice of you.”

He nods and, just as silently as he entered, climbs back out onto the fire escape, and glances pointedly at the clock. “Don’t work too hard, ma’am. Call a cab when you’re leaving.”

She calls a “‘bye, Frank” after him, but he’s already gone.

Karen peels away the tinfoil and an inner layer of waxed paper - to keep the bread from getting soggy, she realizes, and her heart melts a bit. Then her stomach rumbles. Damn Frank and his intuition - she’s starving.

She takes one bite of the sandwich and - oh.

_Oh_.

Goodness gracious.

It’s - something else. Every part of it is delicious, the whole is nearly indescribable. A veritable symphony of flavors, wrapped in tinfoil and waxed paper.

The bread is a crusty, sesame seed-coated Italian roll layered with silky-fresh mozzarella, sparkling-sweet tomato slices, and cold roast chicken. A bright drizzle of balsamic vinegar adds tang. But it’s the pesto that puts it over the edge. This pesto - it’s life-changing. It’s so flavorful, so rich, so fresh that it absolutely has to be homemade.

Of course. Of course Frank Castle makes his own fresh pesto. If he’s a coffee snob, it only makes sense for him to be a food snob, too.

She can’t help but pick up her phone, dial his burner number, and furiously whisper, “God _damn_ it, Frank, you have a _food processor_?” when he picks up after half a ring.

He barks out a short, unexpected laugh. “I used yours.”

“You used my - I don’t have a food processor!” she sputters. 

“I bought one for you. Your kitchen was missing one. Sorry I tried it out first. By the way, you need locks on your windows.”

She sighs, pushes a few wayward strands of hair out of her face, and laughs. This is from the breaking-and-entering, small appliance-gifting, sandwich ninja/guardian angel that holds all of New York and probably all of America in a thrall of fear and loathing. “Thank you, Frank. It’s delicious. You’re spoiling me.”

“Ain’t nothing, ma’am.” She thinks there’s the barest trace of a smirk in his voice, but she can’t be sure.

It’s a nice moment that she can’t stop herself from potentially ruining by blurting, “Are you still, uh - ?” _Punishing?_

She listens to him breathe in and out, steady and even, for a long minute before he speaks. He never used to breathe like that, she thinks. It had always been fast and shallow, fight or flight. Usually fight.

“It’s - it’s. Different, now. The people I needed to kill - they’re dead. And I’m done with that.” His voice is quiet. A breath in, a breath out, staticky over the phone. She wonders what it means, this new steadiness. “But I still hurt people, Karen. I hurt people who deserve it and I don’t feel sorry about it.”

She suddenly wishes she were with him right now, that she could see his face and know what he’s feeling. “Okay,” she whispers.

And if they were together she would let him know, somehow, probably without any words because she’s not sure that she has the right ones, that she recognizes whatever drive it is in him, whatever spirit lives within him that makes him hurt people who hurt people, and that she wouldn’t ask him to try to cut himself off from that because she knows he can’t, she knows it’s in him - no, that it _is_ him, and that she’s okay with that because she cares about all of him, not just the parts of him that are easier and less painful to care about.

But she’s down here in her office and he’s probably on the roof of the Bulletin building, waiting for her to leave so he can shadow her home, and these aren’t the kinds of things she can just say to him over the phone.

But she’ll find a way to tell him someday, maybe, if she can get him to stick around.

“Well, I have to get back to work,” she says, aiming for nonchalance and failing horribly. “I hope I didn’t, uh, interrupt, um, anything important.”

“Nope,” he says, popping the “p,” and she feels slightly reassured that he’s not going to vanish from her life again after tonight.

“Well…thanks again. It’s a really good sandwich.”

“Sure thing.”

“Night, Frank.”

“Take care, ma’am.”


	3. steak

Valentine’s Day has the makings of a great night in: Snow and a biting wind howling through Hell’s Kitchen, E Street Radio on Karen’s shitty home speaker, takeout from somewhere to be determined, Frank’s bottomless Queens coffee, and a dossier full of evidence on a sex trafficking ring run out of a nail salon in Spanish Harlem.

He knocks on her door right on time, at 8:15.

“Come in,” she calls. “It’s unlocked.”

“Shouldn’t leave your door unlocked in a neighborhood like this, Page,” Frank grunts.

“True,” she teases, “But that’s why I keep you around.”

She looks up as he’s shrugging off his jacket and hanging it on the hook on her door. Blooming under his right eye are the beginnings of what will be a nasty bruise. Frank gets injured - gruesomely injured, not clumsy-injured - more than anyone else she knows, but it still makes her heart clench when she sees a new cut or scrape.

“Frank,” she sighs, getting up to meet him by the door, where the light is brighter. “What happened?”

He shakes his head.“It’s nothin’.”

She frowns. “Doesn’t look like nothing to me.” In a fit of unusual boldness, she reaches up to trace the injury with a ghosting fingertip.

Frank’s mouth twists. “Would you believe I’ve taken up boxing?”

A series of arrestingly vivid images flits through her mind.

Frank hunched on a stool in the corner of the ring, wrapping white gauze around his broad, scarred hands.

Frank bared to the waist, sweat coursing down the tense planes of his body and gathering at the sharp V of his hips as he squares to deliver a crushing blow.

Frank sagging against the ropes after a bout, spent but victorious, a lazy, cocky smile illuminating his features.

She bites her lip. “Is that so?”

He graces her with half a smile. “Well, Pete has.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Curt suggested it…said I needed something to do with myself. Some way to vent my energy. We learned some boxing in the Marines and I had a bit of a knack for it. Seemed as good as anything else.”

“That’s good, Frank. That’s really good.” And she means it. 

“Anyway, my sparring partner got a little overeager.” He motions to his blackening eye. “Just a kid. It was a good hit.”

“Well, this _kid_ should be more careful or he’ll have me to answer to.”

Frank laughs. “He’ll wish he’d never been born, then.”

She steers him to the kitchen chair that she had vacated. “Sit. Let me see if I’ve got some ice for that shiner.”

She roots around in the freezer, a veritable wasteland of frozen pizzas. She really should keep some icepacks in here for when he drops by unannounced and makes a mental note to grab some the next time she’s at the grocery store. Which might be six months from now.

Of course, there’s no ice in the freezer, but - “Here. You mind using this?”

She turns back to him, brandishing a frozen Omaha steak.

Karen has never actually seen someone use a steak as an ice pack and, until now, honestly thought it was something that only cartoon characters did. But it doesn’t seem to bother Frank, who accepts it with a terse nod and slaps it against his purpling cheek.

“Where the hell’d you get this?”

“Work thing. Everyone got a set as a Christmas bonus, but I don’t know how to cook steak. I have enough to last me a year. Speaking of which, where am I calling for takeout?”

Frank peels the steak from his cheek, looks at it, then gestures to her with it. “You got more of this in there? I’ll teach you.”

“Teach me what?”

“How to cook a steak.”

“I don’t have a grill.”

Frank scoffs. “Don’t need a grill. Got a cast-iron skillet?”

“Yes.”

“Then we’re good.”

***

Frank opens the refrigerator and lets out a low, disapproving whistle. “Jesus God, woman, no wonder you’re thin as a rail. There ain’t shit in this fridge.”

“I’m fine, Frank. I eat cereal, I get takeout. I take leftovers from the office. It’s fine. I just haven’t been able to grocery shopping in a while. Like you, I have a very full social calendar.” She sticks out her tongue at him, for good measure.

He closes the fridge door and strides purposefully out of the kitchen as if he hadn’t heard.

“Where are you going?”

Now he’s shrugging on his jacket and taking his black ballcap from a hook by the door. “I’ll be back. _Lock_ the door this time, please.”

“Frank, what - ”

“Won’t be long,” Frank says, like that answers the question. The door slams behind him.

“Don’t kill anyone,” Karen calls, faintly.

Fifteen minutes later, Frank is back, laden with two full paper grocery bags balanced against his hip as he pushes open her door. She spies a stalk of celery peeking out, nearly tickling his nose.

“Just ran to the bodega around the block. They didn’t have much, but it’ll do for now.”

“Frank, I could have ordered a pizza. This is ridiculous.”

***

“All right. Now - salt and pepper go on the steak. Butter, garlic, rosemary - in the pan. You don’t need none of that fancy shit. This right here is enough for a perfect steak.”

They’re standing side-by-side at her tiny kitchen counter, each with a thawed raw steak on a cutting board. A platter of honey-roasted carrots warms in the oven, and an arugula salad chills in the refrigerator. Frank’s handiwork, all.

“Medium-rare okay?”

“Sure.”

“Damn straight. So we’re gonna put the steaks in the skillet.” He picks up his steak with a set of tongs and sets in in the shimmering-hot skillet, then hands her the tongs so she can follow. “And we’re gonna wait exactly two minutes, then flip.”

***

“Frank, this is amazing. The steak is perfect, the carrots - I didn’t know they could taste like that.”

“That’s what you get with fresh food,” he says, jabbing his fork at the plate of honeyed carrots. “Way better than that canned shit.”

“You know, I never took you for a fresh vegetables kind of guy,” she teases. “I was thinking more protein bars and tuna in pouches. No offense.”

He shrugs, but smiles. “Yeah, I eat that shit too. But I’m Italian, and I appreciate a good meal much as the next guy.”

“Where did you learn to cook? You’ve really got a knack for it.”

“Learned by necessity. All because of my wife,” he says, with a quiet, fond chuckle.

Karen can just picture it - Maria, whipping up perfect pot roasts, pancakes, and pies, and firmly but patiently guiding Frank through it until he was an expert too. “She taught you?”

Frank throws his head back and laughs richly. “Hell, no. She was a terrible cook. God, I used to feel so sorry for my kids when I left for duty. They knew they’d be eating Pop-Tarts and mushy spaghetti ’til I came back.” He shakes his head, smiling fondly. “Maria knew it too. She was a disaster in the kitchen. Didn’t stop me from being crazy for her, though.” He shakes his head again and quiets, expression softening into something distant and more sad.

Maria becomes more real to Karen in that moment, Not the platonic ideal of a wife, but someone who wasn’t perfect but so loved anyway. She hadn’t meant to make him talk about her. “I’m sorry, Frank. I didn’t know…I wouldn’t have asked.”

“Nah,” he says, leaning back in his chair and appraising her. “No need. You’re good with that.”

“With what?”

“With making me remember them, the happy stuff. Thinking about them without thinking of how they died…it still hurts, but it’s the good hurt, you know?”

“Yeah. I know.”

***

After they’ve eaten, Frank and Karen clean up the remains of the meal in companionable silence.

Before she can think too hard about what she’s doing and what it means, she opens the junk drawer, pulls something out, and presses it into Frank’s palm with half a smile.

“Here. Next time you’re thinking about pulling a B&E, use this.”

He looks down at the key for a long moment, and then back up to her. “Page, I - I shouldn’t have this.”

“Nonsense. I have a few extra copies. Foggy and Claire have them, too.” 

He shakes his head. “But - ”

She wraps a hand around his forearm and steps into his space, willing him to meet her eyes and get the message without her having to say it: _You’re welcome here. You’re safe here. It’s better when you’re here._ “I want you to have it, Frank.”

He holds her gaze, and she can see the emotions flickering rapidly in his dark eyes - confusion, dispute, acceptance, then gratitude. He looks back down at the key like it’s something important, something precious, and then slips it into his pocket.

Her heart stutters with joy and relief, but she schools her face. “There’s just one rule, Frank.”

“Yeah?”

“You can’t use my food processor without asking.”

Frank grins. “Wouldn’t dream of it.”


	4. chili

It’s been a really, really long day.

The weekly staff meeting had gone haywire when Jan from the ad section accidentally spilled coffee all over Karen’s favorite skirt, then a fire drill forced the entire office outside in a thunderstorm for 45 minutes. The line for takeout at Fuji Mountain was so long that Karen had to settle for a lunch of stale Goldfish crackers she dug out of her desk drawer, she accidentally deleted a draft of a proposal for Ellison about a series on veteran wives and widows, and the evening trains were running at a snail’s pace because of signal problems.

Karen shambles into her apartment at 8:30, shrugs off her coat and steps out of her heels with a sigh of immense relief. She’s ready to throw on the biggest, ugliest sweats she owns and settle onto the couch for a night of HGTV, whiskey, and some massively depressing heat-and-serve mac and cheese when she spots a bright yellow Post-It stuck to the microwave.

Someone had been here.

In her apartment.

It could be a threat, or coated in anthrax, or - it could be Frank. He did have a key. Hanging out with him as frequently as she has been has made her more than a little paranoid. Then again, Punisher-level paranoia has saved her life more than once in the last year.

She inches close enough to the microwave to read the note but not enough to inhale any spores or particles that might be hiding on it.

But the note is written in a neat, block handwriting that she recognizes, and she steps closer to pull it off the microwave door:

 

_Page -_

_Stopped by to nuke some chili. There’s a container for you in the fridge. Hope you like jalapeños._

 

There’s no signature, not even an initial, but underneath the note is scratched a little doodle - just a square with two dot eyes and three little teeth, underlined by a wide X. It’s a tiny, stylized skull and crossbones. A little Punisher symbol.

It’s in that same Sharpie script as the label on the life-affirming caprese sandwich from a few months back. She wonders if he keeps a black marker on his person all the time.

Frank Castle, taking out New York’s garbage armed with an M16 and a Sharpie.

She should be alarmed, she definitely should _not_ find that mental image both funny and somehow endearing, but she just shakes her head and bites her lip to keep a real smile from taking over.

As promised, she finds a microwave-safe bowl of chili in the refrigerator, thick and ruby-red and looking more delicious than anything else that has ever existed inside her kitchen.

And there’s more: a plastic bag of freshly shredded cheddar cheese, another holding two lime wedges, and a little Tupperware bowl of sour cream, presumably to top the chili. Another note, stuck to the top of that one:

 

_Tortilla chips are in the pantry_.

 

She laughs and shakes her head, then finds the promised tortilla chips. She pops the chili into the microwave and pads back through her apartment to change and tidy up while dinner heats, but she finds there’s nothing to tidy up.

The dirty dishes floundering in the sink for the last three days have been washed, dried, and put away in the kitchen cabinets. The mountain of linens she’d dumped on the floor of her bedroom before heading to work this morning has been folded to knife-edged creases and piled neatly in the laundry basket. Even the squeaky sink faucet in the bathroom has been fixed and polished.

_Dammit, Frank_ , she thinks. _Dammit_.

He’s almost pathologically neat, probably some leftover habit from the Marines, and he can’t sit still for more than five minutes without something to do. It’s not surprising that he’d find a way to occupy himself.

But - why this?

He could have done any number of other things in the scant time he probably spent in her apartment today. Clean a gun. Read. Clean another gun. Call David or Curtis. Clean yet another gun. Even watch her TV - she knows he knows her Netflix password. Clean one more gun.

But he did this for _her_ , knowing it would make her happy. Knowing that she’d appreciate the gesture, and him for doing it.

She feels tears pricking at the corners of her eyes - _God_ , it’s been a long day, a really long day - because after all that shit that happened today with zero redeeming value, Karen knows that Frank fucking Castle thought of her and wanted her to be happy, even if it was only for a minute. She smiles, then, and then covers the smile with one hand like it’s a secret she wants to keep all to herself.

She can’t stop being surprised by him. The thoughtful, Sharpie-toting, chili-cooking serial killer who washes her dishes and folds her laundry. Who breaks femurs like they’re no more brittle than matchsticks. Who murders anyone who even thinks about hurting her. Who wears a key to her apartment on the same chain as his dog tags and his wedding ring.

The chime of the microwave snaps her out of it. She wipes a stray tear, a good tear, from her cheek and resolves to shelf her swirling thoughts for the evening. It’s been a long day, after all.

Five minutes later, _finally_ , Karen flops onto the couch in the hideous sweats and slippers, flips to a _House Hunters_ marathon, and digs into two fingers of whiskey and Frank’s chili.

Predictably, the chili is heavenly.


	5. eggs

Karen wakes up in the dark with a dull, thudding headache. Her alarm clock reads 10:14 in cheerful green digital numbers. _What the hell -_

Hangover?

No.

Explosion.

Now she remembers. The docks, the Dogs of Hell, Frank slicing through them like a scythe through wheat with his KA-BAR, bikers collapsing left and right, heads, limbs, fire, gasoline, _the sound -_

One of the bikers had caught her by the hair in the dusty aftermath, dragging her along towards a van and God knows what else, when Frank had stepped out of the smoke. Even at some distance, she could see his body coursing with power held just in check, and that his black, black eyes had glinted flat and empty. And then his voice, rumbling out in the dark like a glacier grinding down a mountain: “Let her go.”

The biker’s hands had crept around her neck, cinching tighter and tighter and _tighter_ until everything had become red and hazy and sound seemed to come from very far away and underwater. Then it eased and Karen thought _I’m dead_ , dreamily, detachedly, and then she woke up in her bed, at 10:14. She does the math even though her thoughts seem to be moving slowly through a great sea of molten glass and she figures she must have slept for at least 20 hours.

With a heave and a hiss of pain at the apparent bruising across her ribs, Karen finally manages to lever herself out of the bed and into the bathroom. She notes that she’s still wearing the dirty slacks and blouse from yesterday, but that her wounds - a few nicks across her cheek and chin, a long, mean scrape on her left forearm, and bloody knuckles on both hands - are clean and dressed. The rest of her body is a constellation of bruising.

She shuffles slowly back out to the living room and finds Frank on her couch, feet kicked up on the coffee table next to a chipped red mug, paging through her dog-eared copy of _The Count of Monte Cristo_.

The irony of _that_ choice is not lost on Karen, even in this state.

He puts down the book and stands to come to her.

“Hey.” He hunches down a bit to check her pupils, then puts a gentle knuckle under her chin to tip her head up, inspecting the necklace of fingerprint-shaped bruises that will take a week to fade.

For his part, Frank doesn’t look too bad - a bruise has bloomed across one of his cheeks, but otherwise he seems mostly unscathed.

His fingers skate down to her shoulder, and he looks up to meet her eyes again.

“You remember what happened?”

When she speaks, her throat feels like it’s been finely sanded and her voice is quiet and hoarse. “We were at the docks, looking into that prostitution ring, and the Dogs of Hell - there was a bomb, or an explosion, or something, and then one choked me…and that’s it.”

He watches her unwaveringly, she supposes for signs of confusion or memory loss. “Yeah,” he says heavily, evidently satisfied with her recollection of the events. “That about covers it.”

She chews her bottom lip. “How did we get out?”

He looks at her and away, fast. “You passed out but you were breathing.”His eyes fix on a point behind her left shoulder and glass over. “I got you to my van. By then, you were awake but woozy - you probably don’t remember any of it. I patched up what couldn’t wait and got you back here, cleaned up the rest, and put you to bed.” 

She realizes - he was scared. Frank had been scared for her.

“Are they dead?” she whispers.

His eyes snap back to hers, and she sees that flatness in them again. The cold conviction she read in his face when the biker had his hands clasped around her throat. “Yeah,” he grates out. “They’re dead.” There is no shadow of remorse or doubt in his voice or his face.

She holds his dark gaze and says, “Good.”

The air between them thickens for a moment, and she’s aware of his hand resting heavily on her shoulder, the way his thumb lays gently against the skin of her throat. His face is close to hers. She’s still holding his gaze but she notices his Adam’s apple bob as he swallows hard.

He doesn’t blink.

She does.

The tension of the moment snaps, and he backs up, letting his hand slip down her shoulder and away. “How you feeling?”

She sinks down to sit on the couch and snorts. “Like shit.”

He cracks a small but relieved smile. “There she is.”

“ _She’s_ awake, but at what price?” Karen grumbles.

“You hungry?”

“Um…yeah. Wow, yeah, I am.” The nausea and blood-smell after the explosion had been so bad that she thought she’d never be hungry again, but now her stomach rumbles appreciatively at the thought of something to eat.

“Lucky for you, I stocked your fridge with _real_ food last week.”

“What would I do without you, Frank?” she sighs. “I mean it.”

He gets down on a knee to look her in the eye and tugs on a lock of her lank hair, eyes her grubby, bloody clothes. “You shower.” It’s not judgmental; she knows he could care less if she’s starting to smell stale. God knows he’s showed up smelling like death and worse more times than the two of them can count. She knows he wants her to be comfortable, to feel cared-for. He tucks the lock of hair behind her ear, softly. “You’ll feel better. I’ll get this going.”

***

Karen emerges from the steaming bathroom half an hour later in soft sweats, feeling more like a human being than she has in days. A heavenly smell wafts in from the kitchen.

Frank is knocking around in her kitchen in his dark jeans and dark shirt and sock feet, and Karen can’t help from smiling because she can hardly think of a time when he’s looked more charming. Then he turns around and she laughs out loud, because he’s wearing her apron stamped with “Kiss the Cook.”

He looks up from the stove, then down at the apron, and then back up to her with the slightest smile. “Where’d you get it?” 

“The apron? It was an apartment-warming gift from Claire. She lives in the building across the street.”

Frank grins. “Ah, Nurse Temple, now _she_ shoulda been a Marine. Woulda kicked all of our asses and then had us out of Afghanistan in ten seconds flat.” 

Karen laughs again. “She’s an angel, that woman. And a good friend.”

“Hell’s Kitchen don’t deserve her, that’s for sure.” He shakes his head. “Now sit. It’s almost ready.”

After apparently becoming acquainted with the layout of her cabinets and drawers, Frank lays a steaming mug of fresh coffee and a battered IKEA dish in front of her. Despite the fact that it’s nearly midnight, the plate is piled high with a glorious breakfast: two silky poached eggs, each pillowed on a buttery slice of grilled toast, a hash of peppers, onions, and potatoes, fried up and lightly crusted with garlic salt and cayenne pepper, and wo rashers of bacon, just crisp enough without being overdone. 

The food is simple, nothing she couldn’t have cooked up for herself, but there’s something about it having been cooked just for her, by Frank Castle, the goddamn _Punisher_ , who has been bustling around her kitchen in an apron that says “Kiss the Cook,” that makes it special.

And good _God,_ but it tastes heavenly.

Karen takes another bite of the potato hash and involuntarily closes her eyes in bliss. “Frank.”

“What? Needs more pepper?”

“Frank, this is incredible.”

He shrugs.

She grins around a mouthful of egg. “I have a great idea. You could be on a cooking show. _Hell’s Kitchen’s Kitchen._ What do you say?”

“My ugly mug ain’t fit for TV, ma’am.”

“Actually, during the trial, you were on TV all the time and let me tell you, you have some very loyal fangirls. They wouldn’t complain about seeing you on TV. They still call me at work. They think I know where you are.”

Frank is taking a sip of coffee and chokes a bit; Karen thinks he’s laughing. He swallows and puts the mug down. “You do know where I am.”

“Yes, but I’m keeping you all to myself.” She smiles around a sip of coffee, and it’s dark and strong, just the way she likes it. But she starts kicking herself almost immediately - was that too flirtatious? Too forward?

But Frank’s cheeks glow just a bit and he smiles ever so slightly into his coffee cup.

In a fit of insanity or something, Karen leans across the table, cups his face, and kisses Frank on his unbruised cheek.

He coughs again and blushes more deeply. “What, uh, what’s this about?”

She points to the apron.

He looks down in bemusement.

“Thanks, Frank. This is…well, this is the best food I’ve had since the last time you cooked for me.”

He shakes his head, but his eyes are soft when he looks up at her. “I don’t mind. You should take better care of yourself. There’s another dozen eggs in the fridge, oats in the pantry, apples and clementines in the crisper drawer. Gotta eat more than freezer food, Karen.”

“I’ll do my best,” she says solemnly. “And thanks for…for staying. I know you, uh, could have been doing something else.”

He shocks her by reaching out and grasping her wrist, his calloused fingers enveloping the delicate bones and paper-thin skin with incredible gentleness. “Bullshit. This is where I needed to be.”

She watches his thumb trace the veins of her wrist, back and forth, back and forth. Barely edging against her fluttering pulse. He’s so gentle. He kills for her. He would die for her. He’s all kinds of contradictory and she’s still teasing all of the threads apart.

She flips her hand over, so they’re palm to palm. “Yeah?”

He stills for a moment before he wraps his fingers more securely around hers. “Yeah.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> apologies for the long hiatus. a couple of life things got in the way of fic, and it's taken me a while to get back on track. but fear not! the final two chapters are mostly written, and i hope to have them out in the next few weeks. i've also been shaking and baking on some avengers fic, so if you're into that, stay tuned! thanks for the kudos and kind comments, i've read them all.


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